Top 140 Stieg Larsson Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “In the evening he went to the cinema to see “The Lord of the Rings”, which he had never before had time to see. He thought that orcs, unlike human beings, were simple and uncomplicated creatures.”

— Stieg Larsson

102. “It was completely impossible to box with her. She had only one style, which we called Terminator Mode. She would try to nail her opponent, and it didn’t matter if it was just a warm-up of friendly sparring.”

— Stieg Larsson

103. “Capitalists’ wet dreams is to be involved in charity.”

— Stieg Larsson

104. “Mimi was massaging Salander’s back and neck. She had been kneading intently for 20 minutes while Salander mainly enjoyed herself and uttered an occasional groan of pleasure. A massage from Mimi was a fantastic experience, and she felt like a kitten who just wanted to purr and wave its paws around.”

— Stieg Larsson

105. “It was troubling that one of the few people she trusted was a man she spent so much time avoiding.”

— Stieg Larsson

106. “She had put on make-up in a colour scheme that indicated she might be colourblind.”

— Stieg Larsson

107. “She still weighed only forty kilos and stood one metre twenty-four centimetres tall.”

— Stieg Larsson

108. “Too many cooks might wreck the whole dish.”

— Stieg Larsson

109. “Stark raving mad.”

— Stieg Larsson

110. “Salander leaned back against the pillow and followed the conversation with a smile. She wondered why she, who had such difficulty talking about herself with people of flesh and blood, could blithely reveal her most intimate secrets to a bunch of completely unknown freaks on the Internet.”

— Stieg Larsson

111. “Files are one thing. People are something else.”

— Stieg Larsson

112. “Blomkvist had to tell the story from beginning to end. A couple of times Henrik interrupted with a question or asked him to repeat something. Frode said not a word. When the story was done, Henrik.”

— Stieg Larsson

113. “I started to write in 2001. I wrote the books for the fun of it. It was an old idea I had had since the nineties.”

— Stieg Larsson

114. “When he ran into her at Susanne’s, she was friendly but cool and distant. When they met in her bedroom, she was wildly passionate.”

— Stieg Larsson

115. “The NSA had enormous resources and used a vast network in order to capture a large number of mobile conversations in a certain region simultaneously. Each individual call was separated and processed digitally by computers programmed to react to certain words, such as terrorist or Kalashnikov. If such a word occurred, the computer automatically sent an alarm, which meant that some operator would go in manually and listen to the conversation to decide whether it was of interest or not.”

— Stieg Larsson

116. “Greeks who coined the term “Amazon.” The word literally means “without breast.” It is said that in order to facilitate the drawing of a bow, the female’s right breast was removed, either in early childhood or with a red-hot iron after she became an adult.”

— Stieg Larsson

117. “Writing detective stories is about writing light literature, for entertainment. It isn’t primarily a question of writing propaganda or classical literature.”

— Stieg Larsson

118. “At some point on the morning of the second day she came to a terrifying realisation. She had no idea how it had happened or how she was supposed to cope with it. She was in love for the first time in her life.”

— Stieg Larsson

119. “The desk was orderly, only a few paper in one heap. At its edge was a silver-framed photograph of a dark-haired girl, beautiful but with a mischievous look; a young woman on her way to becoming dangerous, he thought.”

— Stieg Larsson

120. “In this candid and rounded memoir, Baksi answers the questions a multitude of Larsson’s fans have already asked about his upbringing; the recurring death threats; his insomnia and his vices; his feminism.”

— Stieg Larsson

121. “The media have the ability to attract the craziest people to call in perfectly absurd tips. Every newsroom in the world gets updates from UFOlogists, graphologists, scientologists, paranoiacs, and every sort of conspiracy theorist.”

— Stieg Larsson

122. “Thinking about her mother always pitched Salander into a mood of helplessness and darkness black as night. As a teenager, she had cherished the fantasy that her mother would get well and that they would be able to form some sort of relationship. That was her heart thinking. Her head knew that it would never happen.”

— Stieg Larsson

123. “He sat still for almost ten minutes before he heard movement in the corridor and was aware that the police had arrived. By now he was not thinking of anything in particular. Then he raised the revolver one last time, held it to his temple, and squeezed the trigger.”

— Stieg Larsson

124. “She was surprised to be alive. Yet she felt indifferent. If death was the black emptiness from which she had just woken up, then death was nothing to worry about.”

— Stieg Larsson

125. “She felt high, as if she had consumed some inappropriate and presumably illegal substance. She focused her gaze on the street lamp outside the window and sat still while her brain worked at top speed.”

— Stieg Larsson

126. “To rest. Not to wakeup. Forgive me, Mimmi.”

— Stieg Larsson

127. “Salander gave him a long look, satisfied herself that he was an idiot, and decided that she would not waste too many seconds concerning herself with his existence.”

— Stieg Larsson

128. “I can still remember the unexpectedness of The Girl with the Dragon.”

— Stieg Larsson

129. “In ordinary detective novels you never see the consequences of what happens in a story in the next book. That you do in mine.”

— Stieg Larsson

130. “Blomkvist had often wondered whether it were possible to be more possessed by desire for any other woman. The fact was that they functioned well together, and they had a connection as addictive as heroin... sometimes weeks and months would go by before they saw each other. But even as alcoholics are drawn to the state liquor store after a stint on the wagon, they always came back to each other.”

— Stieg Larsson

131. “Every year Swedish society produces a new generation of threatened women who can testify to the lack of legal rights and the lukewarm interest shown by the police and other authorities.”

— Stieg Larsson

132. “Her apartment in Stockholm might look as if a bomb had gone off in it, but mentally Salander was extremely well organised.”

— Stieg Larsson

133. “Lie rather still because this is the first time I’ve used this equipment.”

— Stieg Larsson

134. “You mean that your buddy was lying?”

— Stieg Larsson

135. “That’s the crux of almost every fight, the moment when the strength drains out of you and the adrenaline pumps so hard that it becomes a burden and surrender appears like a ghost at ringside.”

— Stieg Larsson

136. “When other people are grieving, the newspaperman turns efficient.”

— Stieg Larsson

137. “No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on something else- pass the time and to distract her situation she was in- The fear came trickling out. It however like a cloud of gas around her threatening to penetrate her pores and poison her. She had discovered that the most affective way of keeping the fear of day was to fantasize that something that gave her a feeling of strength. She closed her eyes and conjured up the smell of gasoline.”

— Stieg Larsson

138. “Cortez looked like someone newly in love, the way only twenty-four-year-olds can look.”

— Stieg Larsson

139. “But intelligence officers never really retire, they just slip into the shadows.”

— Stieg Larsson

140. “And yet it was her life that was going to be turned inside out. She would be forced to explain herself and to beg for forgiveness because she had defended herself.”

— Stieg Larsson

141. “I abhor crime novels in which the main character can behave however he or she pleases, or do things that normal people do not do, without those actions having social consequences.”

— Stieg Larsson

142. “The equation was simple. A bank director who blows millions on foolhardy speculations should not keep his job. A managing director who plays shell company games should do time. A slum landlord who forces young people to pay through the nose and under the table for a one-room apartment with shared toilet should be hung out to dry.”

— Stieg Larsson

143. “On his way home to Katarina Bangata, Bublanski felt an.”

— Stieg Larsson

144. “The older I get, the more I think it’s like a game of roulette. I don’t believe we’ll ever figure out precisely how the brain works.”

— Stieg Larsson

145. “He did not for a second doubt that Salander was mentally ill and capable of killing.”

— Stieg Larsson